Will Holder

Following an open call, this is—the very last issue—a collectively-compiled "Erratum", or addendum [if you will] to the twenty-three issues from 2007 until now.

Edited with Paul Abbott, After 8, Alma Sarif, Phil Baber, Daniel Blumberg, Thomas Boutoux, Kristien Van den Brande, Chloe Chignell, Martina Copley, Anthony Elms, Chris Evans, Carolina Festa, Kasper Feyrer, Richard Finlay Fletcher, Ben Green, Mariëtte Groot, Krist Gruijthuijsen, Léa Guillon, Sarah Handley, Gloria Hasnay, Loes Jacobs, Michel Khleifi, Willis Kingery, gerlach en koop, James Goggin, Keira Greene, Léa Guillon, Jacob Lindgren, Kobe Matthijs, Martino Morandi, Zen Nguyen, Alice Notley, Robert M. Ochshorn, Oscar the dog, Willem Oorebeek, David Reinfurt, Scott Rogers, Andrés de Santiago Areizaga, Rosa Sarholz, Clara Schulmann, Andrea di Serego Alighieri, Sabrina Tarasoff, Kristy Trinier, Seymour Wright and Unknown.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organization of reading and writing in contemporary art practices. It was published by de Appel in Amsterdam (2007–2016) and is currently co-published by KW with uh books.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. 

The 21st issue, “Take, Eat” is edited by Will Holder, with Andrea di Serego Alighieri. Andrea’s image-heavy talk on word spacing and vocalisation runs all the way through, on the right-hand pages: the opposite pages contain responses from Will. The issue almost stifles the triangulated space of image, context and commentary; and speaks of the moment between words, things, people, images, perception, past, present and future, between Andrea’s pages and Will’s, as where meaning might breathe.

The Mill is the second of three projects to engage the resource industries of Vancouver Island (mining, forestry, and fisheries) through contemporary art and writing. This publication responds to forestry: a mobile industry of logging camps that follow the trees; prices that rise and fall; mills that open and close; communities that boom and bust. In The Mill, artworks are accompanied by a multiplicity of voices, including forestry workers, plant ecologists, and indigenous land stewards. Together, these perspectives chart the cultural and material shifts brought about when trees become commodities.

The Mill is a project that emerged on Vancouver Island to follow a thematic path from the microcosms of the forest floor to the quantifying and processing of lumber and the global distribution of forestry products. Expanded from two exhibitions at the Nanaimo Art Gallery, “Silva Part I: O Horizon” and “Silva Part II: Booming Grounds,” this book examines forgotten or under-acknowledged histories, while considering both local sites and forms of cultural expression that surround international forestry practices.

Contributions by Celestine Aleck, E. Richard Atleo (Umeek), Marian Penner Bancroft, Myrtle Bergren, Al Bersch & Leslie Grant, Peter Culley, Wilmer Gold, Bus Griffiths, Robert Guest, Jason de Haan & Miruna Dragan, Richard Hebda, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Duane Linklater, Liz Magor, George Sawchuk, Carol Sawyer, W. G. Sebald, Kathy Slade, Kate Stefiuk, Kika Thorne, Nancy Turner, Fred Wah, Elias Wakan, Merv Wilkinson, Anne Pask-Wilkinson, Ashes Withyman.

Graphic design: Will Holder.

Some years ago, Will Holder and Alex Waterman proposed to Robert Ashley that musicians and non-musicians might produce new versions of his operas, by way of typographical scores. The bulk ofYes, But Is It Edible? is a result of that proposal: scores for Dust (1998) and Celestial Excursions (2003). These operas’ characters have, until now, been solely produced by and are the stories exchanged between Ashley and his “band” (singers Sam Ashley, Joan La Barbara, Thomas Buckner, and Jacqueline Humbert); and in landscapes produced by “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Tom Hamilton, David Moodey, Cas Boumans, and Mimi Johnson—the result of a thirty-year relationship.

The scores for Dust and Celestial Excursions are preceded by a selection of Ashley’s work, from 1963 to 2008, drawing attention to the varying relations between instruction and score, and the tones of instructional address. Working with these scores gave us a better sense of how each one produces a specific mode of decision-making, telling us what to put on the pages of the scores, for any reader who follows.

Yes, But Is It Edible? is the fourth in a series of publications produced with or by Will Holder and Alex Waterman that a musicological perspective on scoring speech, and the role of printed matter in collective forms of reading and writing: Agape (Miguel Abreu Gallery, 2007); Between Thought and Sound (The Kitchen, 2008); and The Tiger’s Mind (with Beatrice Gibson; Sternberg Press, 2012).

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. The 20th issue, “Correctional Facility” is edited by Will Holder paying attention to difference; and transformations between

accident⎱design 249
acorn⎱oak 293–94, 297–98
adult⎱child 95, 139, 207, 308
alphabetic⎱postliterary 3
alphabetic⎱postalphabetic 3, 5
alphabetic⎱analphabetic 5
analytic⎱linguistic 298
ankh⎱kiss
angles⎱angels 162
aristocrat⎱ass 12
ass⎱man 28
aye⎱eye 160
bad⎱good 130
(outstandingly⎱remarkably)
before⎱after 19, 49, 51, 158,
201, 263, 305
bitter⎱sweet 65, 163, 217
both⎱and 8, 119, 123, 160, 173, 180, 245, 292, 298
cart⎱horse 2, 9
coming into being⎱passing away 318
communism⎱democracy 319
composition⎱improvisation
163, 168, 170
concrete⎱abstract 288
dark⎱light 43, 64, 127, 223,
261, 300, 309, 316
diegetic⎱non-diegetic 145, 193
dropped out⎱drop doubt 160
either⎱or 6, 14, 39, 43, 54, 85, 119, 120, 132, 195, 223, 249, 288
emotional⎱intellectual 297
enthusiastic⎱tempered 13, 78, 205
ἕν καἰ τὀ πᾶν⎱one and all 224

everything⎱fragment 33, 138
everything⎱all things 218–22
experience⎱attention 39, 40, 65, 254–5
green⎱blue 127
high modernism⎱post-structuralist⎱postmodernism 165
radical modernism⎱modernism⎱
postmodernism 4, 164–66
I⎱sigh 160
image⎱word 6, 72, 316–18
Isis⎱Isis 226
jar⎱jars 76, 158, 159
left⎱right 7, 28, 127, 217
meaningful⎱meaningless 258
oak (a⎱ok) 290, 293–94, 297–98
orality⎱textuality 3, 264
phoneme⎱letter 180
phonetic⎱ideogrammatic 297
shit⎱gold †
signal⎱noise 39, 40, 65, 254–55
sweat⎱tears 292
tail⎱bell-rope 151, 154
thesis⎱antithesis 322
written⎱unwritten 158, 296–97
vowel⎱consonant 180–82, 292
we are⎱we ain’t 93
white pawn⎱white pawn 224
word⎱world 8, 12, 138, 160, 165, 166, 180, 183, 260, 265, 287, 298, 300, 315, 317
writing⎱nature 27, 44, 83, 120,
121, 126, 166, 183, 198, 203,
219–20, 252, 297, 318–19

Published October 2020.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. The 19th issue, “very good*” is edited with Paul Abbott. Like music, the issue’s “theme” is better off unaccounted for, and up in the air, like a flock of birds (creatures who feature heavily), circling around performance, listening bodies, given time, and loving relations.

The nineteenth issue of ‘F.R.DAVID’ is edited by Will Holder and Paula Abbott, and will serve as a reader for “We can still see the horizon (and it’s curved)”, a summer residency in Scotland led by the editors. It includes a surprising array of contributions from writer Jorge Luis Borges, journalist and writer Italo Calvino, composer Hugo Cole, literary critic and theorist Barbara Herrnstein Smith, percussionist Milford Graves, philosopher Michel Serres, novelist and essayist Wilson Harris, poet Bernadette Mayer, composer and music theorist Harry Partch, pianist and poet Cecil Taylor, and several others.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. The 18th issue, “Recto Verso” is edited by Will Holder, and had its beginnings in prosody, the measure of language, geometry, and a notion of imagist transcription, even. A two-dimensional exercise, it turns out, on paper. Words were tuned out, in favour of the volume of values our bodies exchanged: “the historical and bodily movement of language amongst subjects.” Attentions turned—taking (the measure of) classes in body language: the non-verbal: the insinuated: the reverse-side of image: the backside, and, oddly: Oh no: we don’t speak about that—to the next page…

“Black Sun” the 17th issue, edited by Will Holder in conversation with Krist Gruijthuijsen, to accompany the exhibitions David Wojnarowicz Photography & Film 1978–1992, Reza Abdoh, and TIES, TALES AND TRACES. Dedicated to Frank Wagner, Independent Curator (1958–2016), at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin. The issue departs from Wojnarowicz’s grief at the loss of loved ones during the 1980s AIDS crisis, and anger at the US government for their willful neglect of this loss.

The issue assembles a chorus of various gendered and sexual positions, all seeking support, love and intimacy in linguistic, architectural and bodily structures, all the while under threat of collapse. These voices are threaded together with excerpts from Julia Kristeva’s white, feminist, psychoanalytical, semiotic Black Sun. Depression and Melancholia (1992).

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. “what I mean is—” the 16th issue, edited by Will Holder.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. “Flurry” is the 15th issue (a best-of, of sorts) edited by Will Holder. “I realized very slowly over a period of time that the activity of framing a performance and the intentions that accumulate around that activity produce a certain anxious kind of mode, and I became bothered by the flurry of activity and how it tends to mask so many things.”

“Recognition” is concerned with bodies, ecology, empathy, gazing at the world, and reading (environments) from non-anthropocentric POVs—nonetheless described and written by humans. Animals, birds, and trees feature heavily.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, edited by Will Holder, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises. This 13th issue of F.R.DAVID is edited with Riet Wijnen, and has its origins in her Registry of Pseudonyms, an online database which accounts for who is who and why who is who. ‘Inverted Commas’ follows ‘pseudonym’ through names, naming, bodies, brains, self, author, other, reader, labour.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises.
This issue, “All distinctions are mind, by mind, of mind”, has a split personality, allowing comparative readings between left/ right, good/ bad, manic/ depressive.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises.
This issue, "Spin Cycle", is concerned with captioning, commentary and description. Edited with Mike Sperlinger.

F.R.DAVID is a typographical journal, dealing with the organisation of reading and writing in contemporary art practises.

“With Love,” takes correspondence and calligraphy—or letter-writing—as model for information theory, and adaptive, cybernetic relations.

The 6th installment of The Social Life of the Book series is a section of the catalogue of publications from English conceptual artist Helen Chadwick’s personal library, reproduced by Will Holder for single mothers. The library was acquired in 2006 and is held by the Henry Moore Institute archive, Leeds, UK.

The Clip-On Method is THE book on the work of Cady Noland everybody was waiting for but nobody expected. Two volumes, almost 600 pgs, that gather a minute, specific, documentation of the artist’s works (“often shown within their first installations,” from 1984 onwards) and further unfold the issues and questions that form the core of her practice and structure her engagement in art – without imposing any interpretation, critical perspective, other than the one proposed (suggested) by the artist’s own approach to the book form.

Book 1 gathers documents, essays, sholarly texts and articles regarding capitalism, violence, aircraft industry, racial discrimination in US universities, amongst various issues, interspersed with pictures of the artist’s works.

In Book 2 there are more photographs along with an exciting, impressive collection of writings by Noland (including, of course, “Towards a Metalanguage of Evil”). Most of the texts, and several of the pictures as well, are presented as facsimiles, laying out the work process, and the origins of what forms that sum.

Design by Cady Noland, Will Holder

Edition on Moyra Davey's film Wedding loop, in which a wedding party is being reflected through the work of 19th-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron.

Design by Will Holder

Le Chauffage (french for “The Heater”) is an artist-run publication based in Brussels and Vancouver. It is conceived as a cross-continental, community oriented platform. Le Chauffage brings together the work and writing of artists / friends from different cities with the  intent to spark discussion and fuel casual forms of critical discourse.

The second issue of Le Chauffage contains photographs and texts, photographs of text, photographs as text and vice versa. Loosely thinking through the format of The Photo Essay celebrated by John Szarkowski in an eponymously titled exhibition at MoMA in 1965, this issue considers some of the artistic possibilities that can be found in such an archaic and historically male-dominated form. 

Many of the contributions that make up this second issue are not photo essays per se. But each one of them considers the printed page as a space in its own right. The magazine becomes an interior where words and images entertain a malleable and distinctly porous relationship. At times, it is also a space where artists and writers from different cities were invited to meet and collaborate. And since interest in other people is also an interest in yourself, it is always unclear who is really transforming who?

Contributions by: Bob Cain & Linda Miller, Moyra Davey, Laurie Kang, Niklas Taleb, Madeleine Paré & Diane Severin Nguyen, Josephine Pryde, Slow Reading Club, Ken Lum, Isaac Thomas, Vijai Maia Patchineelam, Artun Alaska Arasli & Graeme Wahn, Stephen Waddell, Maya Beaudry & Chloe Chignell, Lisa Robertson, groana melendez, Victoria Antoinette Megens and Will Holder.

Editors: Emile Rubino and Felix Rapp
Co-Editor: Francesca Percival
Design: Francesca Percival and Felix Rapp
Cover Design: Francesca Percival
Printed by: Cassochrome, Belgium
Edition of 350

An unconventional invocation of Michael Stevenson's practice over the past 35 years.

From his refuge in upstate New York—the studio/ living complex where he enacted a late pivot back to figuration—the American painter Philip Guston once offered the following outburst to the question of how such a turn could happen.

"What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into frustrated fury about everything and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?"

Over time, this sparse utterance takes on an architectural form in the imagination, a model that proposes a tantalizing proposition when fleshed out. The painter's words situate us in two distinct yet adjacent rooms. The first: a lounge with a TV, its live feed constantly aflicker. The second, a space that's more sequestered, which we can simply understand as a place of production: "the studio." Between these spaces, the painter, often working through the night, is also the viewer or reader, shuffling back and forth as he navigates these two rooms. At a certain point, night becomes day, and we shuffle back and forth together, the presence of one room arriving in the other.

Published following the eponymous exhibition at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, in 2021.

Described as an “anthropologist of the avant-garde”, Michael Stevenson (born in 1964 in Inglewood, New Zealand, lives and works in Berlin) investigates the mythology that surrounds renowned and controversial events which have been significant in the spheres of both art and politics.

Graphic design: Will Holder

The project initiated by artist and filmmaker Beatrice Gibson and typographer Will Holder, based on the eponymous score written by Cornelius Cardew in 1967.

In 2010, a production process was instigated by filmmaker Beatrice Gibson and typographer Will Holder, with the intention of using British composer Cornelius Cardew's musical score The Tiger's Mind as a means of producing speech. Since the score concerns the changing relations between six characters in production, practitioners from other fields (musicians and visual artists) were invited to three conversations at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Kunstverein in Amsterdam, and CAC Brétigny. 

After each conversation, a printed document was made and distributed amongst the characters, to serve as a score for subsequent conversations. Any other ends would be found in conversation. After some time it became clear that a film would be made: Beatrice Gibson's The Tiger's Mind. This book is a document of its making.

We begin with the image of an idea in ruin. A small field of assumptions disassembled. A question no longer in need of its mark. A thought not sure where it began. It starts from the body and language. The debris of these three words, crumbling already at and, did not break apart but congealed the separations once made. We start from a research (project) undone and just beginning. 

Typesetting and design: Will Holder
Produced by: A.pass

Chloe Chignell works across choreography and publication taking the body as the central problem, question and location of the research. She invests in writing as a body building practice, examining the ways in which language makes us up.